


A New Future

by ultharkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Friendship, Happy Ending, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 01:32:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17255111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: Thanks to the DJD, Trailcutter and Artemis had no chance at a happy ending. After the end of the events of Lost Light, Artemis does something about that.Written for cavalierconvoy, using their very cool OC, Artemis.Contains: canon-typical violence (nowhere near as gory as canon), time travel, happy ending, friendship, romance.





	A New Future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CavalierConvoy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CavalierConvoy/gifts).



“This is a bold new future!” Rodimus announced. “It can be anything we want it to be!”

At the back of the crowd Artemis stood quietly, a scratched and dented Rodimus star held tight in her palm. Anything? she thought.

* * *

“I couldn’t have saved Quark,” Brainstorm stated, and Artemis nodded in painful sympathy. “I went about it the wrong way.” He sighed, the evening light of Necroworld casting deep golden shadows on his masked face. He didn’t seem unhappy now, but his regret echoed her own, the ghost of Quark as real to him after all these years as the ghost of Trailcutter would always be to her.

Artemis sat with her back to Trailcutter’s plinth in the Necrobot’s endless garden. There were very few spark flowers here; Trailcutter had never been a vicious fighter, never a killer if he could help it. He had been gentle, and kind, and self-effacing to the point of aggravation, but wonderful too. And even though it had been his kindness that had gotten him killed - his kindness and his stubbornness - she never could have blamed him for it.

She knew where the blame lay - with his killer - and he was dead now too. 

“I won’t say this is gonna be easy,” Brainstorm said, and Artemis gave another acknowledging nod. She had spent too long missing Trailcutter, too long wishing she had been with him and First Aid and Bluestreak on Ofsted XVII. Too long dwelling on her anger before finally going to Brainstorm with her request. 

“But you can do it?” she asked, launching the question like a lance.

Brainstorm didn’t answer right away. He looked out over the fields of glowing blue flowers. In the coppery sky, the first stars began to twinkle like the sparks of all those new lives that Cybertron now supported. Then he swung his briefcase onto his lap, and Artemis steeled herself against the death of hope; it wasn’t that briefcase any more. Then the case clicked open, and she couldn’t help but look. Lying snugly over the apparatus that kept him alive was another case, slimmer and smaller, and stamped with the Neocybex glyph for ‘second chances’. 

“I can’t,” he said, and handed the slim case over. “But you can.”

* * *

Artemis knew she wouldn’t arrive in time. Brainstorm had warned her about paradoxes and causality, and the risks inherent in reaching Trailcutter before First Aid had sprinted off for help. She didn’t need to be warned about the risks of reaching him too late. She had to trust to Brainstorm’s calculations, to her planning, her reflexes. 

She activated the machine in a crouch, the case strapped securely to her hip. She had a pistol in one hand, the glittering sharpness of her crystalline short sword close to hand. A bag lay heavy across her shoulder, other devices registering against her energy field where they sat hidden under her armour. There was a moment of disorientation, a flickering passage of unreal colours and a spark-churning perception of depth, then the universe resolved around her, and she was through. 

Those first few moments seemed to stretch on forever, writing details to her memory that she could never erase: the glimmer of the forcefield, the stillness of the air, the shine of Kaon’s biolights and the glint on his denta as his grin froze and the blank space where his optics might once have been began to focus on her. 

She would always remember the shot she didn’t fire - she was too tight for space in the bubble, too close to Trailcutter - and the arc of her arm as she powered her fist around, straight into Kaon’s face. 

Trailcutter was slumped, one hand on the floor as he tried to push himself to his feet. Artemis would always remember that too; so tenacious, bold even when injured. His optics widened as he saw her; his jaw dropped. 

He spoke and she missed it, lost in the volume of Kaon’s rage. The impact juddered up her arm, and she got a grip on her anger. She couldn’t afford to reach for her shiv, satisfying as it would have been to send the glittering blade straight into his spark. Instead the EMP charge dropped into her palm from its hiding place at her wrist, and she slapped it against the side of Kaon’s head. It magantised fast, and she kept her pistol trained on him, just in case, as he juddered into unconsciousness. 

She had the urge to kick him now he was down, to scream her pain and frustration and lay into him with all that she had for the harm he had done, for the loss she had suffered. Instead, she checked the status of his energy field, making sure he was out cold. On the other side of the forcefield, Vos was staring at her. 

They couldn’t linger. And she couldn’t kill Kaon. He had a part to play, and a doom to meet, and Brainstorm had been adamant that nothing should look to have changed. The past must seem exactly as they all remembered it. 

Which meant there was an Artemis out there, waiting for a message from Trailcutter that would never come. Her past self had no hint that he was in danger; she would learn that he had died, and she would grieve and hurt, and there was no way to shield her from that without creating another rupture in the fabric of the universe, another timeline that could have consequences even Brainstorm couldn’t guess at. 

Artemis pulled the spent charge from Kaon’s twitching frame, and swung down the bag that had been clipped to her shoulder. It clattered on the floor, making Trailcutter flinch. 

“Artemis?” He was dazed, and she spared a moment to touch her forehead to his before spilling the bag over the inside of the bubble. “You were on the ship…” he said. “What’s going on? What’s…” He gaped as he saw what she was scattering around. “That… that looks like me.”

She took his hand, wet with energon, his fingers shaking. “We don’t have much time,” she said, looking straight in his optics. She tried not to see Vos stalking on the outside of the bubble, claws scraping the surface, testing its strength. Trailcutter was all that mattered. “I’m from the future,” she said. “I’m here to save your life. Kaon killed you… was going to kill you. Brainstorm made me a time machine so I could come back and save you. We miss you. I miss you.”

His jaw couldn’t drop any further. “I… I’m missed?”

She nodded, and bit her lip. “All this,” she said, and gestured at the filthy ground, at the facsimile of his corpse that First Aid had put together for her. “This is so we don’t create a paradox, or a new universe, or… or a million other terrible things Brainstorm is sure will happen if we’re not careful.”

“And I’ll come back with you?” he whispered, and Artemis wanted so much to hold him, but the clock was ticking, the precious seconds draining away. She squeezed his hand. 

“Come back with me,” she said and, although she’d promised herself she wouldn’t, that she’d wait until they were safe and calm and could apply rational thought, she added, “be my conjunx. I don’t want to face the future without you. But don’t answer now! We’re running out of time.” 

“Yes,” he said, and the squeeze he gave her in return was far weaker than she would have liked. “Yes. A million times yes! But what about them?” He nodded to Kaon, and to Vos still stalking, still trying to find a way in. 

“I’ve got something for them,” Artemis said, and took up the final gift from their friends in the future, a little box that had taken Brainstorm and Chromedome months to perfect together. She set the timer, and lay it in Kaon’s slack palm. “They won’t remember a thing.”

* * *

She found it hard to remember much either, once she was back in her own time. Trailcutter was a heavy weight against her side, warm and weak, but beautifully alive. She held him up, enjoying the heat of him, trying to bring all those clear sharp details back into a coherent narrative so she could report exactly how it had all gone down. 

Brainstorm’s grin could be seen even through his mask, First Aid’s too. They were waiting as planned, in a private ward in one of the clinics First Aid now ran. 

First Aid rushed up to them, and half-embraced Trailcutter as he put himself under his arm to help maneuver his large frame to the bed. “I’m so glad to see you!” he cried, his words coming all in a rush, and Artemis grinned to see Trailcutter’s shy, happy smile. 

He winced as they lay him gently on the padded slab, and First Aid got to work. Artemis brought up a chair and settled beside him, not wanting to leave even to wash herself down. She had only let go of Trailcutter’s hand to let First Aid arrange him, but she caught it again; she had no intention of letting go any time soon. 

“Did you mean it?” he whispered, turning his head to face her. She leaned forward and kissed the end of his nose, then his lips. 

“Of course I mean it,” she said, and glanced up at First Aid, terrified for a brief moment that there would be a guarded message in his optics, that Kaon had done more damage than she was able to tell. But First Aid was relaxed and unhurried, a smile in his eyes, and she was infinitely relieved. 

“We’ll get you up and about in no time,” First Aid announced, and Brainstorm added, “I’ve got some new mods I’m testing, something to channel your forcefield, make it do all kinds of cool stuff. When you’re fixed up, you wanna come test it out?”

“When he’s all fixed up,” First Aid said, and patted Brainstorm on the shoulder. “Repairs first, mods later.”

Trailcutter seemed to have lost the power of speech, but Artemis could feel from his energy field that it was emotion that had stolen his words. 

Eventually he nodded, and Brainstorm took his leave to give them some space. “There’s a lot happened,” Brainstorm said as he approached the door. “Artemis can fill you in.” He paused, and Artemis wondered if he was thinking of Quark, and whether one rescue could lead to another, and maybe another. As Rodimus said, the future could be anything they wanted it to be. 

“I need to go fetch some things,” First Aid stated. He lingered a moment too, allowing himself a fond look at his patient, his friends. 

When they were alone, Artemis folded her arms on the edge of the bed and rested her chin on them. 

“Did you want to go get cleaned up?” Trailcutter asked, though it was obvious he didn’t want her to go.

“It can wait,” she said. “And Brainstorm’s right, there’s a lot I need to tell you. There was a war. We won. The hot spots ignited, there are new people everywhere. There’s a whole new Cybertron out there. A whole new universe.”

“And we can face it together?” Trailcutter said. He looked tired now, comfortably so, but drained by his ordeal. Artemis reached out to lay a hand on his chest, over his spark. The energy tickled her palm, and her own spark glowed in happy communion. 

“We can,” she said. “We will.” 

And they did.


End file.
